MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia has yet to score 70 points in Big 12 play through three league games, and the Mountaineers were held to a season-low 56 points in Tuesday’s to Arizona.
Yet for the 21st-ranked Mountaineers, who have gone four straight games without reaching the 70-point mark, a positive offensive development has recently surfaced in the form of Sencire Harris’ perimeter shooting.
After missing his first 28 three-point attempts and going 12 games without connecting from beyond the arc, Harris has made 4 of 7 from long range since. His first two threes of the season came in Saturday’s 69-50 win against Oklahoma State, and Harris followed it up with two more triples over a 30-second stretch in the second half of a 75-56 loss to the Wildcats.
“I’m in the gym 24/7 and always working on my shot and staying with it,” Harris said. “When the moment comes, I’m going to do what’s required.”
The Mountaineers’ success offensively has largely been predicated on three-point shooting, with WVU making 9.9 threes per game and 139 thus far this season, both of which rank third in the Big 12. The team’s 401 three-point attempts are more than every Big 12 team with the exception of BYU.
Yet up until recently, the only players regularly part of the rotation that had yet to hit a three season were Harris and 6-foot-11 center Eduardo Andre, who hasn’t attempted one.
“Throughout the summer, he shot 35 percent from three,” first-year WVU head coach Darian DeVries said. “It was one of those things, he got off to a slow start, started to get in his head a little bit and sometimes you need to see one go in during a game. Now he can go back to relaxing and playing.
“He was still making them in practice. It wasn’t like he’s not making them in practice. It was a little bit of a mental block and that happens. It can happen with free throws and threes. You can have players go into a little bit of a gap there between makes sometimes. He just had a bigger gap than some others.”
A sophomore southpaw who played the 2022-23 campaign at Illinois before redshirting last season, Harris made 13-of-41 three-pointers two seasons ago with the Fighting Illini.
Harris’ role first and foremost as a Mountaineer is centered around being a defensive pest and he is contributing 5.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.5 steals on average.
The 6-4 guard has scored at least eight points in all three Big 12 games to date with a total of 25 and nearly half of Harris’ point production in league play has come from long distance.
“Shooters shoot. I’m just going to keep shooting,” Harris said. “That’s a confidence thing and a mental thing. You can ask these guys. I’m in the gym 24/7 shooting the ball and they see me at practice making shots.”
While WVU was unable to maintain the momentum moving forward, Harris’ two treys against the Wildcats came when the Mountaineers were attempting to work their way back into the game. A Javon Small triple had cut the Wildcat lead to 48-37, before Harris followed with threes on consecutive possessions to bring WVU to within five, though it never got closer the rest of the way.
“When he’s open and if he’s lined up and feels good about it, I want him to shoot,” DeVries said. “We need him to score and be a threat — and he is a threat. We know that from practice, but now he has to prove it out on the floor. That’s a big deal for us. Now all of a sudden it’s another guy you have to guard, because he can make them and he will make them as we move forward. I have no doubt of that.”